“Kobach Discovers College Students Live in College Towns”

Despite his claims that he won’t “pre-judge” the findings of the Trump “Voter Fraud” Commission of which he is the vice-chair and public face, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is already inserting misleading claims into the public dialogue ahead of the Commission’s next meeting in New Hampshire. Specifically, he says there must have been voter fraud in New Hampshire because people registered to vote with out-of-state driver’s licenses (which is legal), and some still do not have a New Hampshire license or car registration. From this alone, he claims the election was tainted because these people must not have been eligible to vote in New Hampshire (he also purports to be able to divine which candidate they voted for).

It’s worth noting that Kobach is basically recycling the same misleading claim he made after the election, when he suggested there was widespread voter fraud in New Hampshire because of the mere fact that people registering on election day used out of state licenses. But this is completely legal, and commonplace, especially for college students, who probably comprised the majority of these voters. A typical example would be someone who lived in Massachusetts and got a driver’s license at 16, moved to New Hampshire for college at 18, and registered to vote in New Hampshire.

But now, Kobach is making hay out of the fact that of the 6,540 individuals who registered with out of state IDs, 5,313 of them had not gotten a New Hampshire driver’s license or registered a car there as of August. From this alone, he claims there is “proof” they never were “bona fide residents” of New Hampshire and voted illegally. Philip Bump has already pointed out some of the flaws in this logic, but it’s worth explaining at least three reasons the claim is completely bogus:…